Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

The Turing Test is in no danger

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Just some fun wordplay, from this MeFi thread dealing with AI, language, and other such goodies.
Some English sentences likely to trip up any AI program attempting to understand them:

  • We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were hungry.
    We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were ripe.

    How do you determine what object ‘they’ refers to in each sentence?

  • It’s hard to recognize speech.
    It’s hard to wreck a nice beach.

    Say these two aloud.

  • Visiting relatives can be boring.

    One sentence, two ways to understand it.

  • We saw her duck.

    Three meanings (the least obvious involves a serrated blade).

  • Time flies like an arrow.
    Fruit flies like a banana.

    With thanks to Groucho Marx, I believe.

No more popups (almost)

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Since I’m one of the many people out there who believe, to the very depths of my soul, that popups are evil, I’ve removed the popup window for posting comments. Now, clicking on the ‘comment’ link will take you to the page for the post itself, and scroll down to the comment form. Simple, but much easier.

I still haven’t got the TrackBack popup banished. That’ll be a project for another evening (tomorrow)? I’m ready to quit for the night tonight.

Testing EspressoBlog

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Just making sure that this is working. I’m trying out EspressoBlog, an OS X app for posting to MT or Blogger powered weblogs.

Seems to work so far — I’ll know for sure as soon as this posts.

Two things I’m noticing that I may want to toss Phil‘s way to see if he’s interested in including in the future:

  1. It can only post to the ‘main entry’ field.
  2. There’s no way for me to put TrackBack links in

Those are hardly dealbreakers, though. This isn’t bad at all…

Found via Phil Ringalda

fCon

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Okies — so a while back I babbled about the Tron DVD, and included a link to www.tronkillerapp.com — which appeared to be the beginnings of a promotional site for the rumored Tron 2.0 movie.

Well, tonight I stopped by the site again, and things have changed — a lot. Things are looking very interesting, too. Using a combination of a Flash presentation and a downloadable screensaver, there’s a little bit of backstory being presented.

Apparently a company called fCon has bought ENCOM (the company from the orignal Tron film), and nobody’s entirely sure why — but there are some hackers doing their best to find out. They’ve managed to intercept a few voice mail messages that you can listen to, and even found some very interesting images that can be viewed (18 in the on-site Flash presentation, 10 more in the screensaver). I’ve gotta say, things are looking pretty nice, and I’m definitely looking forward to this coming out.

The work on fCon is hilarious, too. At the site, you can get a little bit of background information on fCon…

fCon is dedicated to creating and controlling the future we know you want. Even if you don’t know it yet, don’t worry. Because we do. And we are committed to making our dream a reality.

…you can check out their privacy policy…

Should you decide to register with fCon, rest assured that any personal information we gather from you will be used for our purposes only, and at no time will any third party involvement occur*.

  • “Third party involvement” refers specifically to fCon competitors. Partners, vendors, and other companies that have established a reasonably good faith relationship with fCon (as determined by our senior executives) are clearance eligible for member information on a case by case basis.

…and, of course, you can register for more information…

Just follow these simple instructions to register with fCon (and prove to our Executive Board of Senior Information Executives that you are adept at following simple instructions).

…and it’s all presented like that. Wonderfully condescending — gee, I wonder who they could be poking fun at?

Needless to say, I signed up. ;) This should be entertaining. Sounds like the rumors of the MCP’s demise have been greatly exaggerated…

Nobody’s going to understand this one…

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…but every time I see one of the recent tech weblog posts about “RDF in RSS” (which, to be honest, I barely understand myself), I keep thinking that RDF stands for Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field:

reality-distortion field n.

An expression used to describe the persuasive ability of managers like Steve Jobs (the term originated at Apple in the 1980s to describe his peculiar charisma). Those close to these managers become passionately committed to possibly insane projects, without regard to the practicality of their implementation or competitive forces in the marketpace.

No matter how many times I see it, it always takes a slight moment for my brain to switch tracks after that.

The funniest thing is how some of these posts read if you use the incorrect definition. You don’t need to understand the technobabble — I often don’t — just reading RDF as ‘Reality Distortion Field’ lends a whole different feel to some of the suggestions.

They say the [Reality Distortion Field] in RSS 1.0 will let people do cool things. They say the [Reality Distortion Field] in RSS 1.0 will allow for unexpected connections.

— Phil Ringnalda

I’m not trying to downplay other’s concerns or existing work or effort, and I realize that I have a better understanding of [Reality Distortion Field(s)] than most of you (not bragging, but give me this as an accepted for discussion purposes at this moment) and that this gives me an edge when working with [Reality Distortion Field(s)].

— BurningBird

Keeps me amused, at least.

Top 25 lines from Star Wars…

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…that are improved by substituting the word “pants”:

  1. A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master.
  2. You are unwise to lower your pants.
  3. We’ve got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.
  4. She must have hidden the plans in her pants. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally Commander.
  5. These pants may not look like much, kid, but they’ve got it where it counts.
  6. I find your lack of pants disturbing.
  7. These pants contain the ultimate power in the Universe. I suggest we use it.
  8. Han will have those pants down. We’ve got to give him more time!
  9. General Veers, prepare your pants for a surface assault.
  10. I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants back home.
  11. TK-421…why aren’t you in your pants?
  12. Lock the door. And hope they don’t have pants.
  13. Governor Tarkin. I recognized your foul pants when I was brought on board.
  14. You look strong enough to pull the pants off of a Gundark.
  15. Luke…help me take…these pants off.
  16. Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your pants.
  17. That blast came from those pants. That thing’s operational!
  18. Don’t worry. Chewie and I have gotten into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
  19. Maybe you’d like it back in your pants, your highness.
  20. Your pants betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for your sister!
  21. Jabba doesn’t have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.
  22. Yeah, well short pants is better than no pants at all, Chewie.
  23. Attention. This is Lando Calrissean. The Empire has taken control of my pants, I advise everyone to leave before more troops arrive.
  24. I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
  25. You came in those pants? You’re braver than I thought.

Thanks to Demented Kitty

iCal questions

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It’s been out for a couple days now, but I just donwloaded iCal, Apple’s new calendar/scheduling application. I haven’t even got it installed yet, and I’m coming up with curiosities.

  • Why use a .pkg installer?

    One of the great things about having a Mac is how easy most programs are to install — just drag them over to your Applications folder. Apple even touts this in an article aimed at Windows programmers moving to developing for the Mac:

    The commonly used “Setup” application, along with Install Wizards, are discouraged on Mac OS X. Use a drag install instead, which is simpler and preferred by Mac users.

    So why is it that Apple’s own programs (such as iCal’s, .mac‘s Backup, and so on) are distributed using .pkg files, requiring the use of the Apple Installer program?

  • Why does it need my password?

    Tied into using the Installer, why is Administrator access needed to install iCal? Is it really that tied into the system itself? Just seems odd.

Maybe these questions will be answered as I go along…I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

:-)

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Everything’s gotta start somewhere, right?

Back in 1982, this post showed up on the CMU CS general bboard…

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use

:-(

And the world has never been the same!

Mike Jones has the full story.